2004-07-11 - Riveting bottom skins. (8.0 Hrs).

This was a marathon day in the garage. I started at 9 and the morning and finished at 10 at night. Obviously, I only reported 8 hours, so I must have done some other stuff out there, but I did get one major task accomplished on the wing. With Patricia's help, we managed to get the inboard bottom skin riveted to the wing.

If you follow Van's instructions, this will go just fine. Do the rivets on the rear spar first, then the first four bays, most of the way up. Then go back and do the first few rivets at the rear of each of the other ribs. This is a pretty long reach, and easier done while you can still lift up the front of the skins a little. I was able to rivet these by myself, but it went a lot better with Patricia's help.

The first inboard four bays are extremely tight at the rear. My hand was too fat to actually get a short bucking bar into the rear of the first four bays. I used a long bucking bar which I could hold with my hands sticking through the larger holes in the ribs.

One final note, I set all of the rivets in the inboard rib. I was supposed to leave every other rivet open for the wing fairing. Oh, well.

Before closing up the wing, I took 4 pictures of the insides, just for good measure.

Not much to see.

First task was to deburr and dimple the inboard skins. Make sure that you do a good job of deburring these skins, as you arms will appreciate it later. After the last dimple, I looked the skin over to make sure that I got all of the holes. Apparently, I didn't look close enough, as you can see in the next picture.

Error

I also drilled the platenut holes to #19 in the access cover cutouts.

Here, you can see the dimple that I missed. I simply installed a longer rivet in this hole when I was riveting, and it pulled-up pretty close. I would not recommend that you do this with too many rivets, since it is not that nice, and probably not the strongest rivet.

Cleco the skin on to ensure that all of the holes still line up before you begin riveting.

Here's a picure inside with the skin pulled up a little and the rivets set along the rear spar. Note, the top is a reflection of the bottom.

A little better picture showing the rear rivets. You don't need to bend the skins much to get your arm inside. As you get closer to the front spar, you can simply reach in the access holes. Make sure that you get some rivets in the rear of all ribs before actually riveting any rib up to the front spar.

Patricia could set the rivets half way up from the rear of the wing while I bucked. I was able to reach in and buck and set the rivets nearer the front spar.